Donald. Sir. Light bless you, buddy. I am in total agreement with you.

And that's why I will probably never experience "endgame content". I'm too busy screwing around for "serious business" like killing whatever villain-of-the-week pops up before the next lore-shattered big-bad.

This was a really good comic. Possibly the best comic about WoW I've ever seen.

And thus do we see the major flaw in WoW's design. The leveling process encourages messing around in sandboxes and doing all kinds of stuff. Endgame raiding, in all ways, is designed to be antithetical to the kinds of people who enjoy that process. Endgame is for organized - militarized, even - groups of min-maxers willing to spend dozens of hours becoming expert at a 5-8 minute stretch of content.

The kinds of people who like WoW's endgame are the kinds of people who think leveling is something to be done at max speed and minimum investment, and that it's a barrier to be gotten around in order to play the real game. The kinds of people who like WoW's leveling process are the kinds of people who think endgame is frustrating and boring and limiting. Thus, most people who actually have the patience to level to 90 are people who aren't going to take the endgame seriously, which means the Donalds of the world get mocked for playing the game the same way they're used to playing it, and the Kroms get constantly frustrated that the game funnels talented or dedicated people away from him.

(What I think would be awesome is if they made a few "hardcore zones." Like take Desolace or somewhere, that no one ever bothers with, and make all the quests twice as difficult but reward 3 times as much experience, and have the level range be like 20-40. Three zones like that in the whole game would be enough to attract a lot of players who like significant challenges and allow them to speed their way to the content they actually care about, without making them do content they hate. That way the Kroms can afford to be choosier and the Donalds can have more things to mess around with.)

I actually agree with Donald's viewpoint to a large extent. Being good at WoW won't bring about world peace, end hunger or bring back Twinkies.

But...

Losing all the time isn't much fun either. For most people, winning is more fun than losing, and for some, losing ruins the game. So while Donald is wondering why people are being so mean to him for enjoying the game, he's not realizing that he's being mean to them first, ruining their fun by making them lose and lose and lose.

Nothing compels a sandbox player to join a hardcore endgame raid guild, after all.